District 5 Diary

Rob Anderson's commentary on San Francisco politics from District 5

Sunday, June 03, 2012

Eastern Neighborhoods United Front: ENUF!

"The money questions are most disturbing." The people in this neighborhood group understand that for City Hall it's about the money, not about helping the neighborhoods and small businesses manage parking. According to the latest Transportation Fact Sheet, last year City Hall collected $171,610,099 from city parking lots ($38,742,622), parking meters ($40,520,486), parking tickets ($86,306,584), and residential parking permits ($9,040,407):

Eastern Neighborhoods United Front (ENUF) is comprised of dedicated and concerned stakeholders intent on disrupting SFMTA’s plans to blanket our San Francisco neighborhoods with parking meters. In late 2011 when neighborhood members realized the full extent of MTA’s plans, we immediately went into action. To further unite our stakeholders and provide a statement of our interests, we are launching our website, sfenuf.org on June 1, 2012. Once the technology is in place, we will begin to gather data for our master parking plan. The release date on the survey will be forthcoming.

Neighborhood groups filed an appeal, a public meeting was called, the SFMTA backed off, and promised to work with us on a more palatable plan to control traffic and enhance parking in our neighborhoods. ENUF members spent considerable time and effort creating a web site and designing a survey to track the parking patterns of our residents so we could meet their needs and fulfill our promise to SFMTA.

Subsequent remarks, comments and interviews coming from SFMTA lead us to believe they intended to proceed with minimally changed plans to eliminate existing parking spaces while continuing to claim we need more parking meters to calm traffic and increase parking availability. The recent outrage over such issues as Sunday parking meter enforcement, spying buses, impossible to decipher signs, and really hard to fathom traffic manipulation projects like the debacle in Golden Gate Park have attracted a widening range of public anger.

The money questions are most disturbing. The media is just starting to touch the surface of that mystery. On metermadness.wordpress.com, we try to track as much of the press as we can, but it is hard to keep up with the number of issues that have arisen in recent weeks. We will attempt a list later.

This week we had some good news. District Supervisors are taking notice of residents’ complaints, and the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce has voiced concerns that increased stress on drivers may hurt our delicately recovering local economy.

Even with promises of support from our city officers and endorsement of a slowdown of meter enforcement from other important players, ENUF is not backing off on our work. We plan to continue working on our parking management plans and outreach to ensure the needs of our residents and businesses are met. We invite other neighborhoods to work on their plans and offer assistance where we can provide it.